Why Do We Pray?

Why do we pray?

Why do we pray? What is the role of petition in our relationship with Christ? If God knows our thoughts and needs better than we do, if he has a holly plan that is above our own ideas for ourselves, why do we ask him for things? How can we petition God for things, yet trust that what he gives us is best, even when it is not what we asked for? These are questions that inevitably come up when we talk about prayer and petition as Christians. Many people become discouraged by the subject as they swirl these questions around I their minds, and so often, the answers people offer to these are very rout, and “churchy”. Simply to tell someone that we should pray because God wants us to, or that we should petition him for things without any expectation of that petition having effect are things, will erode someone’s desire to do anything of the sort. It did exactly that for me at one point as I started high school. The purpose of prayer and anything religious at all just seemed so hokey and pointless to me. Compounding this matter is the stories we read in our own bible as well as many we hear all over the place, of people having miraculous events take place in their lives as a result of prayer. We hear of healings happening, the sun standing still, supernatural protection over people in wars through the ages and even people in our own time reporting incredible miracles as a result of prayer. But for many of us, we have never experienced this kind of impacting and dramatic answer to prayer and can wonder if these things are even possible, if we should bother to pray boldly, or even pray at all. And it brings us back to the question; what’s the point?

I don’t claim to have all the answers to these questions, but I think the right path is to first consider what the point of prayer is in the first place. Through scripture we are given verse after verse where God himself is inviting his followers to come to him in prayer. He would not do this if it were not vital to our Christina journey in some way. Prayer, in fact, has an immensely lofty position in scripture.

Jeremiah 29:12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.

James 5:13. Is anyone among our in trouble? Let them pray, is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.

Psalm 17:6 I call on you, my God, for you will answer me; turn your ear to me and hear my prayer.

These are only three of dozens of verses that speak of prayer in our bible, but there is a theme that runs through them all; it is a relationship. There was a time before Christ, when prayer was not possible for the average person, because no single person could interact with God on that level. It was only the priests and prophets who had any audience with God, and even then, it was not on their own terms. God came to them to deliver his message. Because of the new covenant through Christ, and the gift of the Holy spirit, we all now have the privilege of speaking to the creator with no fear of catching fire or our head exploding. We can deal directly with our creator and connect with his spirit like no one could before. And the scriptures speak to this as it describes this tender and direct call to participate in that relationship with Him. It makes sense, right? That as we are invited to have a personal relationship with God, part of that relationship is lived out through prayer. Can you think of any relationship that you have which contains no communication? Where you never talk to each other? In my own experience, I can say for certain that the longer I go without speaking to someone, the more we drift apart in general. And there are people I have not spoken to for many years that I would honestly say I don’t even know anymore. So again, it stands to reason that if we are to expect to have a relationship with our creator, we need to actively participate in it, and communicate with him often. And worth keeping in mind with this is that we only stand to benefit from this relationship. God is not in need of anything from us and we don’t bring anything to the relationship that he is lacking. The whole point is that we are the recipients of what he gives us. He grants us salvation and a relationship with him in the first place, then gives us the privilege of prayer. The more we participate in that relationship, the more we will be changed by it. This is the process of renewing our minds or sanctification. The more time we spend worshiping him, reading his words and talking with him, the more our thoughts will become like his thoughts, our actions will become like his and the more our life will resemble that of Christ. Romans 12:12 says “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” We are continually transformed by the renewing of our minds and prayer is the engine for that renewal within us. For this reason alone, prayer is worth pouring ourselves into.

But what about the result oriented folks out there like myself? I can get behind the idea of relationship maintenance, but what about the verses that talk about petition? How does that work?

Mark 11:24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Ephesians 6:18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying or all the Lord’s people.

Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

How many times have we been a part of prayer circles, prayer in church, petitions for healing, requests for earthly outcomes and “sent” prayerful support to people, and yet we doubt or have a hard time even believing that the words we are saying truly have any meaning or tangible effect on the real world we live in? Is the verse in Mark above untrue if I pray for things that seem well and good but never come to fulfilment? What about his one; Matthew 18:20 “Again I tell you truly that if two of you on the earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by My Father in Heaven”.

Well I think in order to have the right perspective on this we need to look at the situation in the right theological context. No one would argue that prayer to God is similar to wishes and genies, but if we are going to embrace our roles as prayers and petitioners, we need to seek a true perspective on the purpose and effect that we are to expect from that activity. Beginning form the baseline statement that prayer is all about relationship, we can unlock the mystery of the petition as well. Our petition is not in fact tied to some kind of outcome, and the outcome is not tied to the petition we make. The petition is about deepening the relationship we have with our creator, and the outcomes God wills to happen are for the same purpose. See our ability to ever take our prayers to our creator are an absolute result of God’s grace to our lives, and his answers to prayer, weather in the affirmative or not, is also an act of Grace. The proper theological context to place our petitions in is to say that God promises to answer each and every prayer in the best way possible, though it may not be in the form that we asked for or even thought of. So, in the case that we pray for something that does in fact happen, we get to be involved, on a spiritual level, in the execution of the will of God. This reinforces our faith and pushes us to seek prayer in more situations as well as offering it ourselves. In the case that we pray for something and it does not work out the way we wanted, we then get to experience what it looks like to trust the perfect will of God, and grow in our ability to anticipate his will and ways being so much greater and glorious than ours. And to push this further I would say that God answers our prayers as well as the ones we should have been praying the whole time. The point of petition is that we participate in the realization of the glory of our God, as well as the demonstration of his love for his people. We get to have a spiritual front row seat to the carrying out of God’s will, weather it lines up with ours or not. God will do what God will do, and we will pray for what we pray for, and in the end, we will grow in our relationship with our creator, and his Glory will be on display.

Now let’s explore a different facet of this within our own minds. I want to go another level deeper with that concept within our prayer. I want to make the case here that God does in fact answer all of our prayer, but he answers the deeper need within us that we may not even recognize, but is the real thing we are praying for. So, when the bible says that he will give us the desires of our heart, it does not mean that he will give us money or a Ferrari or a big house. Those things are not the desire of our heart, the true desire here is for stability, comfort, pride… And the way he brings us to have those things may be by giving us the absolute opposite of what we ask for. There are so many people that would say they never really felt like they grasped their true stability in Christ, until their earthly stability had been lost. See, God will answer our prayer, but not how we think he will. He will give us the thing we are really praying for.

So, can I end this with a story? When I was 22, I became a Christian and began to explore the concept of prayer. I had never done it before and did not know much about the kinds of things I was praying for. At that time, I wanted desperately to become a fire fighter. I went to school for that, trained for it and devoted every ounce of energy necessary to achieving that goal. In my mind, my life would not be complete unless I accomplished that goal. This attitude also came into my prayer life. I would pray for wisdom, guidance, providence and direction all within my goal of becoming a fire fighter. What I did not realize was that my prayers for becoming a fire fighter were not really requests for a job. What I was really asking for was stability in my life, purpose for it, direction for it, significance in what I did with my time, and something I could be proud of. See I was naively believing that becoming a fire fighter would provide those things, but I was very mistaken. The more success I began to have in the area of firefighting, the more I began to realize that it did not provide many of those things at all, in fact under each of the areas that I thought it solved, I discovered other issues that it also brought up. My childish idea that this job would solve all my problems ad make life wonderful were wrong. And as displayed by the great number of depressed, troubled, divorced and injured fire fighters out there, reality supported that view as well. But it was not until I became injured that this was truly confronted within me. I hurt my back badly, just as I was nearing the completion of this crazy mission I was on. It was severe enough that I was no longer eligible to apply as a firefighter any more. This was devastating to me, because I was depending on this thing to solve all my problems and make me who was going to be. This was my identity, and now it was gone. This forced me to deconstruct my own attitude about that and begin to really question where my identity, purpose, meaning… actually came from. And while I was petitioning for one thing to happen in the real world, God was answering the true petition in my heart. Through that situation, I did not gain the thing I thought I wanted from God, but I began to truly gain the desires that my heart was looking for. I was forced through the loss of my dream, to seek the true answer to my prayer. That answer is simply this; Christ gives me purpose, value, direction, stability, pride, love, hope, meaning and all the other desires of my heart. And the best part is that he does this without ever being in danger of failing, fading or lacking in any way. The more I seek a relationship with him through worship, reading, prayer and obedience, the more I gain the things I would have wanted from the other areas in my life, if I only knew to truly ask for them.

Prayer works. It is as simple as that. Prayer is the best tool for us to exercise our relationship with our creator, it is the best way for us to spiritually participate in the will of God coming to fruition, and it is the greatest way for us to become integrally involved in that process in our own life. We can praise him for answered prayer, whether or not it was what we asked for. We can thank him for the fact that his will is perfect in spite of our imperfect prayer, and we can be humbled and grateful that he answers the prayers we never thought of praying in ways we never thought they would be answered. We are truly on the receiving end of our relationship with our savior, and the process of prayer is simply another layer of that being shown true.